November 10, 2009

I was up early this morning with some gastro issues, not sure what would’ve caused it, perhaps the sugar cane we bought off the street…Caryn gave me some electrolytes and it must’ve worked because I felt fine during the day. Jasmin, one of the kids that walked with us yesterday and helped me practice Kreyol was there this morning. Last night on their walk back to their homes he stepped on a shell or rock and sliced open his heel pretty badly, so we cleaned and bandanged him up. For breakfast I had the Haitian oatmeal and bananas and toast. I made a pb and papaya preserve sandwich to take to the orphanage. We didn’t have too much trouble getting our stuff up the hill, but we didn’t have as much help because it wasn’t a market day and the kids were all in school. When we got to Soeur Flora’s I was so excited to see all kiddos, I saw Enrico first! He gave me a big hug! I looked around the room, but I couldn’t find Christien to get my fist pump, so I asked Stevenson where was Christien…oh, il est mort. Just like that, we had only been in the orphanage for 2 minutes and I was ready to sit down and cry. I guess he had a seizure in June and passed away, I visited his grave in the backyard and saw that they spelled it Crisien. Because we had so much to get done for the day I had to push that sadness way to the back, I am sure when my mind has time to think about it I will be upset. Caryn and I did some tag teaming and we started with Robert and Gondelson since we had the wheelchair there for someone. We went over the stretching routines with the therapist’s and tried them both out in the chair…we decided Robert was the best candidate because we couldn’t get Gondelson to flex at the hips when it was time to sit. We had to adjust the cushion and I added a foam pommel to prevent leg scissoring, hopefully it was enough. We removed the laterals because he was too short and they would not adjust, but we had a butterfly chest strap that will work perfectly. I showed the therapists how to make any adjustments. The car seats we had left for the 2 guys were nowhere to be found, from what I gathered from the caretakers they pointed down the hill and I said far and they nodded. So who knows. I guess they had outgrown them and they were back in the strollers we had originally found them in.
Debi brought in a baby that they say was born 2 weeks ago, and Debi estimates that the baby was 30-32 weeks. I have never seen a baby this small, ever. When I first saw him I had thought that Jean had been close to that small, but when I got back to the resort I looked at the pictures and he mustve been about 4 times his size. Jean by the way is doing amazing! He is sitting on his own, looking around and smiling! He is adorable, yet still has his asymmetrical head, little guy. The new premie’s name is Serge and his mother died during the cesarean. Soeur Flora keeps him in the back room that is used for worship, all by himself for quiet…and she feeds him periodically throughout the night…she said she falls asleep while she is sitting there…it was funny listening to her tell the stories. In what I could get of the French she was saying her very first child when she started the orphanage was a boy named Antoine who was premature and he is now 27 or so! She was very proud.
Beatrice is almost walking, she can pull herself up from sitting very well when she grabs onto your finger, and from there can walk…I also watched her furniture walk (holding onto wheelchairs!)
Daniel is also doing great, he is sitting on his own and so loves attention! We did notice that the soft spot on the top of his head has not closed over, likely we didn’t really note that last time because he had so much hair! I am more in love with Daniel after spending time with him on this visit, great kid. I told Soeur Flora I would take him home.
Enrico and I had some fun with a tickling game, and I gave him the light up ball that mom found at the museum…as predicted he loved it! We made a little video for Karen saying Bonswa Karen! He has such a cute laugh! We asked where his speech board was when we arrived and he was able to point to where they kept it. Red Karen says the new board she made was nowhere to be found. Red Karen took his speech board and trialed it with Watson…I never found out how that went, but she had me calm him down because he thought she was giving it away.
There was another young girl, Djeulency, that was sharing a kidcart with Beatrice, the kidcart was missing all the back padding, and the padding for the L lateral, the head rest was much too low and there were no foot supports so she dangled. I picked up the seat cushion and it was absolutely soaked in urine…it was disgusting. I adjusted the head rest but I need to figure out something to do for the back. Caryn is hoping that she wouldn’t need the kidcart and could just walk. I decided to clean the chair, and gave the cushion cover to someone to have it washed and took everything else out onto the front step with a bucket of water. The cushion had maggots all over it and there were cockroaches in the chair, and when I lifted up the cushion for the first time after we moved the little girl…there was the biggest spider I had ever seen sitting right there on the seat!! AHHH gag.
We went over to visit Travis and his mural, but all he was able to get done today was paint the background white because so many kids were hanging off him in the school. They are going to do a theme of S' unir pour Servir.
We did a lot of work today, hard to pinpoint everything, helped Naida walk on the bars and with her walker. Helped Tada at the bars and hand held. Fixed the chair that had been sent over for James because someone had added a wooden pummel that was ineffective and just a danger to his skin. The foot rests are gone and he is cutting his ankle on something that needs to be further investigated. Debi cleaned his wound.
We got back to the resort at about 5:30 and when we were just getting to our rooms Jasmin was saying he had the coconuts for us. So we gathered up $1 each and Travis was going to run down to the edge of the resort to grab them, but then Wadson yelled for him because they were going to meet the voodoo priest. So, we thought Jasmin had coconuts waiting at the edge so I said I would run down and get them while the rest went to the pool. When we got to the edge though they kept going…so I kept walking, and we gathered a bit of a crowd. There was me and a bunch of the local Haitians walking into the village and I get this feeling like, should I be doing this?, but then feel guilty for worrying about it…that’s the conflict in your brain a lot of the time. Anyway, it was fine, we walked a bit into the village until we got to a palm tree grove and one of the guys starts scooting up the tree! So I yell to Jasmin that he didn’t tell me I was going to need my camera! He said they would do it again tomorrow for pictures :)
Back in the room I washed all the clothes I had worn at the orphanage and hung them out to dry, but it was getting dark so I missed the sun power. I met the girls just as they were leaving the pool so Caryn turned back so I could take a quick dip and clean off slightly. Then we both showered quickly and went to supper, fried chicken, veggies, French fries and citron icecream. We then skedaddled down to the village because we could hear that the voodoo ceremony had started without us! We again, as usual, gathered a crowd as we walked through the village and then all of a sudden this kid was walking near us and he asked Debi if she was going to the beach…I was like who is that! And it was Adense!!! I doubt he remembered me but he stuck close to me all night, and said he would meet us at the beach on Thursday. The voodoo ceremony was something else…what I was most impressed with was the elderly women dancing! Oh boy, did they dance! The crowd oohed and awed everytime the voodoo priest did anything and most of his act seemed more like a drunken show for the crowd…but I really enjoyed being in the midst of it all and watching the crowd more than the priest. Near the end the priest cleansed our group of all evil spirits. Glad to have that done with. I hate carrying around baggage like that! The priest did spit fire a few times, but obviously the gods did not want me to get a picture of it because my camera went dead, but then worked again later! I hope I got some good shots! Over all a jam packed, fun day!